District staff proposes $10,200 vendor contract to bring websites and PDFs into DOJ accessibility compliance

Miss Dunham, the district communications staff member leading the accessibility effort, told the board the district must meet new U.S. Department of Justice guidance tied to the Americans with Disabilities Act (Title II) requiring web and digital‑document accessibility.

She said the district’s web estate contains thousands of pages and more than 3,000 resources, most of them PDFs, and that manual remediation per page could range from $0.32 to $20 depending on complexity. "This service agreement would allow us to make PDFs accessible, by converting them to HTML versions," Miss Dunham said, and the vendor’s one‑year, enrollment‑based price is $10,200 with complimentary service while the agreement is signed.

Board members asked how the service would interact with Canvas and other platforms and whether the quoted price covered the district’s full content set. Miss Dunham said the agreement covers the district’s web domains only and not Canvas, which is a separate domain; she added the vendor also provides automated translation into other languages.

The presentation noted that the DOJ/WCAG 2.1 AA timing varies by district size and that the district’s compliance deadline for districts of its size is this April. Staff said billing would begin July 1 (new fiscal year) but the vendor would provide remediation once the board approved and the agreement was signed.

The item was presented for board consideration and will be brought forward as an action at a future board meeting; no contract vote occurred at the work session.